I'm sure they would be useful for a cardiology doc(who would also have no trouble dropping 300+ on some ears). Not sure the need is there for pre-hospital medicine, ie.. EMTs. I use mine for BPs and lung sounds, and a $50 Littmann suits my purpose just fine.

I'm sure they would be useful for a cardiology doc(who would also have no trouble dropping 300+ on some ears). Not sure the need is there for pre-hospital medicine, ie.. EMTs. I use mine for BPs and lung sounds, and a $50 Littmann suits my purpose just fine.

Understood. But it is axiomatic that once we are in the air, our stethoscopes are useless. That is certainly true in the RW and some turboprop FW; but even in the Learjets it is hard to hear heart or lung sounds really well. Consider, for instance, that our standard scenario for discerning a pneumo in the air is all based on Sx and Sx. We don't even bother to discuss 'were there absent breath sounds on that side'. Same for cardiac tamponade. Forget 'muffled heart tones' as part of the useful indicators. Right mainstem tube placement? No way you can listen for the difference.

I've actually seen one FW nurse who has his stethoscope wired so that he can hear it through his aircraft headset. In the RW that would be necessary since we cannot fly without our helmets on; but our FW operations are all with bare ears.

Anyway, I figure a $200 retrofit COULD be worth the investment IF it really works and improves pt care. But first I'd like to hear from folks that have tried the electronic scopes and found them useful and durable.

Back when I was working on the SOCOM CASEVAC program, we worked on this with a stethoscope company and a hearing pro manufacturer (Littman and Peltor maybe? I can't remember) and we came up with a steth head that plugged right into the comms system with a standard plug and let the flight medic listen to the steth through his headset. BUT it was discovered that the speakers in hearing pro don't have the dynamic range required for medical uses. All the guts of the hearing pro had to be upgraded making it a dedicated device. The juice wasn't worth the squeeze and the project was dropped last I heard. Several of us jumped up and down over it (they were really cool) but it wasn't enough.